Category Archives: Personal stories

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year

(If posts with personal information bother you, leave now.)

Yep, every now and again our friends on the right (and I don’t mean this never happens on the left, it does, I am sure) come up with a non-issue to rile each other up about.  As it is December, the flavor fear of the month is of course, the Democrats’ “war on Christmas.”

I am not sure where this fits on my list of their pet worries that are just paper tigers meant to scare people into thinking liberals are evil.  Is it better or worse than legislation barring sharia law?  Does it piss me off more than the people (you know who you are) who tell me my assertions that Herman Cain was never qualified to be president because he lacks even the most basic knowledge about anything was hypocritical because I like Bill Clinton and he had flaws, too.  Yes, I do like him and yes, he does — we all do.  Apples and oranges or should I just say 9 9 9.

But back to the current outrage.  When people say Happy Holidays they are starting a war on Christmas.  I always say it to everyone because there are more holidays than one, even for Christians.  Even Christians celebrate New Year’s Eve.  But you also don’t always know people religious affiliation, maybe they are all about Festivus or Boxing Day. (Or serious ones like Channukah)

Now, I love Christmas.  For me, it has always been the most wonderful time of the year.  When my parents divorced, my life became pretty chaotic.  Maybe to make up for it, my family gave me three bites at the Christmas apple — Christmas Eve was at my grandmother’s house, Christmas day was at my Aunt Edna’a (is there a law that everyone on Long Island must have an Aunt Edna?  I think there is.) and then we went back to my father’s place for a final round.  It was the only time of the year that I thought the situation was good for me.

It never occurred to me that maybe this is why I love the season so much and I don’t think that can be all of it.  When I grew out of the stage where I could be bought off with toys and candy, my traditions changed but remained really special.  I would go to Minneapolis for Christmas and then on to San Francisco for the rest of my break.  Minneapolis could be one of the best places to spend Christmas.

If you are wondering why none of my fond memories of Christmas have anything to do with religion, it’s because Jesus is not the “reason for my season.”  And I suspect if some people I know read this they will think less of me but it’s time for me to come clean about something.  I am an atheist.  Why would people not like me for admitting such a thing?  I am not sure how my friends from the church I go to will feel about my non-belief of something that means a lot to them.

Yes, I said it.  I am an atheist and I go to church.  I am a complicated person.  That’s why my Facebook profile lists my religion as physics.  I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance in the first grade because of the “under God” part.  I wonder now why I just opted out of that part but I was six and it didn’t occur to me until I found out it was only added because of McCarthyism.

So Christmas was never a religious thing for me.  And don’t even bother spamming me with your comments about it being Jesus’ birthday.  He was born in April.  Christmas was set up to take the place of a major pagan holiday.  If you think there is anything Christ-like about cutting down a tree and decorating it, well, you need to read up on your paganism.  And no, my opinion on this is not because I don’t believe Jesus is our lord and savior (though if anyone can explain how he is both the son of God and God at the same time, please I am all ears).

Because Christmas for me is about the season of goodwill and fun, I never understood people who objected to Christmas decorations.  What’s the problem with festive lights and decorations at a dark part of the year?  No, I didn’t get it.

My first real job after college was working for Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).  She is  Jewish.  At Christmas time, we had a huge tree in the front office and decorations — I think throughout but it’s been a while.  Some staffers were truly offended.  They felt she was abandoning her faith and them.  I asked why and was told that as it wasn’t something they celebrate, the decorations left them feeling left out.  I may be an atheist but Christmas was a huge part of my childhood and finally understood what the big deal is.  I would be lying if I was upset that we kept the decorations up but being a little more sensitive to people from different traditions than me was a good thing.

For the record, my mother has asked me over the years about what my friends are doing for Christmas and I have to remind then that it’s not a something some of them celebrate and she always sounds surprised.  For a few years, we had our own Judeo-Christian tradition.  We did the big breakfast with gifts in the morning and then spend the afternoon at a movie and go for Chinese food that night.

All the uproar over President Obama leaving God out of his Thanksgiving address or having “holiday” parties and the like vs “Christmas” parties is just a whole lot nothing.

And no, Gretchen “black hole of humanity” Carlson, no one gives a rat’s ass what you put in your house at this — or any other — time of year.  Get over yourself.

Note:  I often attend the Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church.  I go for several reasons.  On one occasion where I was having a need for something spiritual in my life I wandered into this church. The pastor, Andy Walton, gives great sermons.  I went back for two reasons, his sermons and the community services they offer — not to get them, I feel I should add, but volunteer for them.  Over the years I had wandered in every now and again but the visit that made me return was last September when I volunteered in their soup kitchen.  That marked the delineation between me stopping in and going regularly.  I like the contemplative nature of his sermons, the ability to help others and the great people I have met.  I have had trouble this fall going because I feel strongly about my person view of religion — not that anyone is wrong, my beliefs are what work for me, if that makes sense. But the juxtaposition of your firm belief and my equally firm disbelief has left me feeling like a bit of a fraud and that is why I have been absent so much.

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Crash and burn and survive to tell the tale

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I took a job with a BMG Classics.  This is one of my favorite stories from that job and my career.

It all started in 1998.  I was looking for a job and sent my resume to every person I had ever met.  I received a call from an acquaintance in New York who wanted to know if I would be interested in doing PR for a record label.  “Sure, why not?” said I and off I went to NYC to interview.  I had no confidence that this was going to pan out — had NO record company or music experience AT ALL. The upside of this was that I could not have been more relaxed.  It just seemed like an adventure.

Several weeks later, my phone rang again.  I hadn’t even gotten around to sending a thank you letter, card or email but the woman who interviewed me wanted to get information about my knowledge of jazz, which was about as much as my record label knowledge.  I was honest about it and told her I like jazz but could never find the time to look into it, what with all the work I was doing.  She offered me the job.  Two weeks later I started work as the Press and Promotions Manager for RCA Victor and Distributed Labels.  That’s a long title that really just means “publicist.”

How little did I know about the music industry?  I had never heard of A & R or liner notes.  “A & R” stands for artists and repertoire.  You probably knew that.

My roster included jazz and world music bands and artists such as the Chieftains, Andy Summers and Ravi Coltrane.  I was essentially the QB of the PR team.  I oversaw publicity for CD releases, tours, proper radio play, etc.  I learned early that my knowledge deficit could be used as an asset.  I called journalists and asked their opinion.  I am new at this but you are the expert, what do you think about …?  It was not unusual for me to be on the phone for HOURS with the same journalist, they love to talk about their opinion.  It was a win-win-win.  They got to pontificate on their favorite topic, I learned a lot and we ended up friends.  I think they found my honesty refreshing, too.  There were months when we weren’t releasing anything great and I would tell them that.  I don’t mean our new releases but RCA Victor has a pretty large repertoire and it was not uncommon to release compilations of older stuff.  One joke a colleague used to tell was that we were going to put a sticker on that read Never before released in this order.

One other thing about the industry that I did not know was how cut throat it is.  About three weeks after I started, most of my department was fired.  The woman who hired me? Gone.  The person above her? Ditto.  The structure went from being: me — my boss — her boss — the president of the company to being: me — president of the company.  And he couldn’t help me because he was new to the business, too — his background was in wine.

For the next six months, I had no real supervision.  That doesn’t mean my projects suffered.  Ravi Coltrane was in a piece in Rolling Stone (a first for my department).  Others did interviews with AP, Washington Post, New York Times, CBS/ABC & NBC News, NPR and others.  I kept the artists happy with updates about their coverage.  I planned record release parties, interviews, photo shoots, tour coverage, etc.  I worked my butt off.

After six months, they hired a new person who would become my boss.  When he started, he seemed nice enough.  He met with everyone in the department to ask what we did and assess our performance.  About a month later, he conducted reviews.  I remember thinking, as I walked in, that I had no reason to be nervous, I had performed well.  My job performance should speak for itself, I thought.  I did tell them — from the start — that I had no prior experience in music.

Famous. Last. Words.

The review started with This is going to be hard on you.  That was the bright spot of the meeting.  Truthfully, the only analogy that pops out from that was that it felt like that sentence was a diving board.  I leapt from that into a pool of hellishness.  The new boss, in keeping with the grand tradition of new bosses, wanted to bring his own people in. He didn’t want to fire me, he wanted me to quit.  I walked to my office, shut the door and spent easily a half hour putting my face back together after the monster cry I had.  My morning that day was spent working on a Hillary Clinton trip to NYC and my afternoon was spent being told that everything that had ever gone wrong at RCA Victor was caused by my time there.

Once home, I thought about the year I had and the work I had done.  I took the next day off to really sort through my thoughts.  By the time I got back, I was resolved to stay.  I had done a good job.  My boss wasn’t thrilled by this.  He said we had to go to human resources and work out how we could monitor my work better.  During our first meeting I told them both, Look, you hired me to be a passing QB, if you want me to run the ball, I will but you cannot change the rules without telling me and expect me to know.  I am not clairvoyant. Surprisingly, my boss agreed.  He thought I was going to fail.  I didn’t.

We had meetings with HR for the next few months.  Every week, he told us that he was impressed with my work ethic, the results I was getting and asked How are you so nice to me when I was so bad to you?  I didn’t admit that I used a Kids in the Hall trick — whenever I saw him from behind in the hallway, I would pinch my fingers together and say I crush your head, crush, crush!  I just told him I am a professional.

Funny side story:  On more than one occasion, he tried to sabotage me.  One staff meeting turned into the “Alyson Show” and I went through the status of all my projects — without notes — I knew what I was working on.  Another time we went out to dinner with two key journalists, he thought they would eat me alive.  They loved me.  We all went to the Village Vanguard after and in a stroke of awesomeness — Diana Krall, the president of the company and our group arrived at the same time.  I pulled the president aside and said “You know Diana, right?” (I had spent time with her in Canada that year).  When I looked over at my boss, the glare on his face almost melted my contact lenses.  It. Was. Amazing.

Eventually, I left RCA Victor.  When I did, I sent the following email to my coworkers, I had always heard Istanbul was an exciting place.  When I got the chance to go, I did and met great, fun and wonderful people, experienced new things and learned a ton.  But at the end of the day, I am not fron Istanbul and it is time for me to go home.  Thank you for everything.

The record industry did teach me a lot.  The lesson that my belief in myself should trump whatever others think has been a challenge sometimes but well worth it and has shaped how I view myself ever since.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Thank you for…

1.  The US Constitution:  It is easy to look at the recent Congressional failures, and the “super

The US Constitution, it rocks

committee” is only the most recent, and think “our system is broken.”  It isn’t.  Flawed, yes.  Injured, probably.  Broken, no.  One thing that has always confused me is why some people, upset by the results of the 2008 presidential campaign, preferred to think that we had entered the “end of days” rather than entertain the idea that they lost an election.  You see, I have some perspective on this.  I worked on the Gore 2000 campaign.  I was devastated by the result but I never — not once — considered George W. Bush to be anything but a legitimate president.  My belief in our system got me through that loss.  When you work on campaigns, sometime you lose.  It sucks but that’s part of the deal.

The other part of the equation is the recognition that as great as our system is, it is a tool.  No tool is better than the people who use it.  our representative democracy, otherwise known as a republic, reflects us.  If we do not like the results it produces, we have no one but ourselves to blame.   I have written several letters to the Washington Post about George Will.  He claims to be both a proponent of capitalism and an opponent of public broadcasting.  And yet, he hates reality TV.  I think you cannot argue that the free market is the best method to produce quality anything and then be angry when it produces crap.  The same can be said of our government. As Bill Clinton used to say, There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America.  Amen, brother.

2. The Mets.  Do I hate to love them or love to hate them?  Clearly the former.  Oh, they break my heart every year.  I am not going to write any more right now about that, I need a break from hating myself.

3. Reality TV.  Jersey Shore.  Hoarders.  Anything with people who weight more than 500 pounds.  We all know why we watch; we want to feel better about our own lives and I am no different.  No, I don’t want to see wealthy, vain housewives spend more in an afternoon on napkins than I spend in a year on rent but  I like that as dirty as my apartment may get, I don’t have goats eating holes in my walls.  Oh, and I can stand up and walk around.  Seriously, your family cooks 12 chickens a day for you?  Do they deliver your heroin, too?  See?  I am clearly a disturbed person.

4. The GOP candidates for president.  About two years ago, I called Michele Bachmann’s office.  I said, “Look, I am not a constituent but I would love it if she ran for president.”  I did not add, because I write comedy and that would be awesome, I figured it was implied. I had no idea Herman Cain even existed.

Seriously, I am thankful for the Constitution but I am infinitely more thankful for my friends and family.  Thank you for being so awesome.

You know who you are.

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Abuse epidemic

US child deaths per day timeline

Every ten seconds a case of child abuse is reported.  More than five children a day die of it.  Where is this gruesome place?  The United States.  We do like to tout ourselves at being exceptional, in this case we are.  The US has the highest rate of child abuse in the world.  That’s right, in the world.  You can listen to the BBC report on this here.

We don’t talk about child abuse, not when reports on it are released.  We only think about it when a high profile person such as a Penn State football coach in involved.  Or when we get to feel the collective anger at someone like Casey Anthony.  We fret and shout and wring our hands and say someone should have done something.  We never consider ourselves to be that someone because when we use that term, we really mean someone else.

Why is this?  We are not a war torn country, like Congo, where children are forced to be soldiers.  We have child labor laws so we aren’t forcing children to make our Nikes (at least not here).  When you compare the rates in the US to that in other developed countries, it becomes clear that the thing they have that we do not is a social safety net.  Hillary Clinton was ridiculed for her book It takes a village but it does.  We have a growing number of younger parents and provide little or no real support — 80 percent of childhood deaths due to abuse or neglect occur in children four or under.  Some of our leaders like to crow about ‘pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.’  Where does that leave these children?  No where good.  Keep in mind, these statistics are low.  The cause of death for many kids who were the victims of abuse or neglect never makes it on to their death certificates.  Medscape article here.

The impacts of the epidemic are felt far and wide.  Abused children are more likely to abuse their children, go to jail or suffer a mental disorder or substance abuse problem.  More details here.

Remind me why the football program at Penn State is worth all of this?

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No means no and never again needs to mean never again

Paul Rusesabagina and Don Cheadle

Another personal post, don’t worry it’s not as intense as the last one.

Today Paul Rusesabagina received the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize.  I was lucky enough to be able to help out.  Paul is one of my heroes.  His actions during the Rwandan genocide not only saved the people in his hotel but he in an inspiration to people currently dealing with similar situations and those of us who are not but who want to help stop and prevent genocide.

We tend to think of genocide as something that happened a long tome ago in a galaxy far away but that is not true.  When the Rwandan genocide was occurring, Slobodan Milosovic was ethnically cleansing Bosnia.  I mention Bosnia for several reasons.  First of all, I was obsessed with Bosnia while the conflict was happening.  One excuse I hear from people about why we should not intervene in this place or that is that “those people have been fighting for centuries, there’s nothing we can do.”  In Africa, this sentiment is magnified by the thought that it is the ‘dark continent’ and there’s even less that we can do.  Bosnia should blow that idea out of the water.  Before Milosovic riled people up, Sarajevo was viewed as the ultimate example of racial harmony.  The “ethnic cleansing” was not caused by racial tension but this genocide was political opportunism.

I plan to write a more detailed piece on the current situation in Rwanda.  For now, I will just write that Rwanda is not the shiny example of reconciliation and peace.  Paul Kagame is not the new kind of African leader we all hoped it would be.  Since he took over, Rwanda has been fighting a proxy war in Congo and exploiting Congo’s natural resources.  Within Rwanda, Kagame allows no dissent.  There is no freedom of the press.  There is no freedom of expression.  Inside Congo, the genocide continues.  Rape is a common tool of war and it is being employed freely.

Back in 1994, I was obsessed with Bosnia and payed little attention to the horrors being perpetrated there.  I don’t know why I cared more about Bosnia than Rwanda.  In 2001, I went to work for the United Nations Information Centre in Washington, DC.  We received confidential dispatches from all over the globe.  While it was impossible to read all of them, I did read what was coming from Congo and it chilled my blood.  Some of the off the record stories I heard about the UN response to Rwanda did the same thing.  The then-Secretary General Kofi Annan said Rwanda represented the worst failure of the organization.  It was also his failure — and I have nothing but respect and admiration for him but he failed.  He was the head of the Department of Peace Keeping Operations.

For over a year, I sent out either a press release on Congo — families were jumping into alligator infested rivers to escape the rebels, masses of people were crowding UN offices and were told if they were caught on the street they would be killed — or some other communication to media about the situation.  A few reporters wrote stories just to make me stop sending them information.  It wasn’t much but it was all I could do.

Paul Rusesabagina did not intend to be a hero.  As awesome as he is, I wish he hadn’t become a hero.  I wish he was back in Rwanda running his hotel and this never happened.  But it did happen and he did become a hero.  In his speech at the Lantos ceremony, he said that he used words and persuasion to keep his guests and his family safe minute by minute — thinking all the while that he would be killed eventually — just to survive a little longer.

Senator Dianne Feinstein used to tell her staff, maybe she still says this, that people fail to do good things because they only want to do great things.  While we may not find ourselves in the position Paul was in, we can still make a difference.  We can educate ourselves and others and let our leaders know that when we say never again, we mean it.